


this point of pale light

by SiderumInCaelo



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Introspection, Movie: Star Trek: First Contact (1996), Space Flight, We Are Tiny (the Universe Is Large)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:54:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26293744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SiderumInCaelo/pseuds/SiderumInCaelo
Summary: After achieving warp, Cochrane looks back at the Earth.
Kudos: 3





	this point of pale light

He had thought, after meeting people from the future and finding out that he - he, Zefram Cochrane - was responsible for ushering humanity into a new era of interplanetary contact, that nothing could faze him. But then he turns to the window of his rocket, which is made of whatever materials he'd been able to get his hands on and held together with little more than hope and quite possibly fate but has just broken the light speed barrier all the same, and he looks back at the Earth -

It's not that he hadn't been expecting the sight, of course. He, along with everyone else, has seen pictures of the Earth from space, taken by space missions of years past. He knows what his planet looks like.

But he drinks in the view now, even though at this distance all he can see are smudges of blue and white and green. Friends and lovers, acquaintances and strangers, allies and enemies, heroes and villains, legends and nobodies - every human who has ever lived has done it right there, on that impossible marble suspended in space, small enough that he could blot it out with this thumb.

How many wars have been fought over borders utterly invisible from this vantage point? How many people killed so that some person could control even a fraction of this minuscule corner of the universe for a cosmically imperceptible length of time? How close has it come to being destroyed, out of hatred or greed or even just plain short-sightedness?

Pure black stretches out endlessly on all sides, decorated with stars brighter than they ever looked from the ground. Out there, if these strange new people are to be believed, are countless other species, each with their own histories and cultures, each with their own point of light to call home.

"It's so _small_ ," he says quietly, more to himself than the others with him. Riker assures him that “it's about to get a whole lot bigger," but Cochrane hadn't meant it as a disappointment. He meant it as a statement of wonder, that there is so much out there for them to explore.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Carl Sagan’s writing about the [Pale Blue Dot photo](https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/536/voyager-1s-pale-blue-dot/), taken by Voyager 1:
> 
> _The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds._
> 
> _Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by **this point of pale light**. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark._


End file.
